A few years ago, we (Sister C's family) didn't have enough money to buy groceries, so I ended up selling our artificial Christmas tree for grocery money. No big deal, we had a crazy dog, a cat and 2 kids under 3. So no one was going to miss not having a tree up. Especially since we had (and still do) a very small home. However, you can't go through the Christmas season without SOME sort of decorations, so I took our card table, draped it with a white bed sheet and put up a Christmas village scene on top of it. Under the table is where we hid the presents - "out of site out of mind" totally helped the little ones not pick and unwrap the presents before Christmas :D Fast forward a few years to last year. I told the kids we were going to put up Christmas decorations one day and they of course got super excited. As we were bringing a few things out, our oldest son asked where the Christmas table was. I told him we weren't going to do that this year, as we had a Christmas tree to put up. I tell ya you would have thought I told him someone died. Then his eyes lit up and said, "I know where it is! I'll go get it!" And he brought the table upstairs so we could get it all set up.
So, even though we had to sell our Christmas tree in order to eat for a week a few years ago, we ended up getting a new tradition for our family out of that situation. Moral of the story - you don't need a lot of money in order to make traditions with your family. You just need creativity. Our kids had no idea the reasoning behind the Christmas table, they just know it's a fun thing to do every Christmas. So from here on out - our family may not always have a Christmas tree up, but you'll always see the Christmas table displayed with smiles :D
Look at this face? I love the look on our children's faces when they look at the Christmas village. I only put up four of our pieces because of the age of the littlest one, and I let the kids put it up, hence why Rudolph is flying backwards and why things are tipped over. But they were proud of doing it. Two of the pieces are from my mother-in-law. She has a HUGE collection of Dept 56 North Pole pieces she bought just for her grandchildren. I'm saddened that we could never afford to visit over Christmas in order for the kids to enjoy them with her. I begged my father-in-law not to sell them, so that we could have them so Cindy can look down on her grandchildren and see their faces finally. I cannot wait until next year when we have our new home and room to put the entire collection up for her :DWhat's a favorite tradition of yours? How did it start?
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